MamaWit Haven: Homeschool Choices for 2019-2020: Electives and Enrichments

Woohoo, it is the first Friday in July! I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer so far! It is now time for the fifth and final post in this collaboration series. If this is your first time visiting, this series has been about homeschool curriculum choices for the 2019-2020 school year. I am co-hosting this collaboration with 5 other wonderful homeschoolers. They are YouTubers Ingrid at Mommy & Mia Homeschool Chronicles, Kim at The Homeschooling Grammy, and Corrine of Mama’s Little Lambs; and fellow blogger, Stacy at DyerTyme. Please make sure and check out each of these ladies channels or blogs. They each have excellent content for those of us on this homeschooling journey!

Also, be sure to check out the playlist and blog list at the end of this post, which contain posts from other participants in this collaboration. If you're still looking for curriculum ideas and suggestions, you will find many here. So far, we have shared our choices for History/Geography/Social Studies, Math, Language Arts, and Science & Bible. Today, we will be sharing our choices for electives & enrichments.

I will add, that since we are changing around a lot of our curriculum this year, I am following a lot of the suggestions found in the Year 1 Enrichment Ideas from Simply Charlotte Mason.

These are the subjects I'm most excited about this coming school year, so let's get to it!

Habits & Personal Development

Laying Down the Rails

I'm really excited to be focusing on habits this year! In Laying Down the Rails, Sonya Shafer has compiled everything Charlotte Mason has written about habits. The book is organized into Decency and Propriety Habits, Mental Habits, Moral Habits, Physical Habits, and Religious Habits. I also have Laying Down the Rails for Children, Books 1 & 2, by Lanaya Gore. These books take each of the habits Charlotte Mason wrote about, and gives you lessons to work with your kids on those habits. Charlotte Mason advocated for instilling one habit at a time, while just keeping an eye on the others already instilled. Each habit should be focused on consistently for 6-8 weeks before moving on to the next habit.

I picked 3 habits to work on during the next school year: Attention, Obedience, and Truthfulness. According to Charlotte Mason, these are the 3 most important habits to instill before adding in the others. I agree! If children have these 3 locked down, the others will fall into line more smoothly.

Ourselves

In addition to the above, my 13-year-old will be reading, on his own, a book called Ourselves, Book I: Self-Knowledge. This book is part of the series that Charlotte Mason herself wrote. He will be reading the first half of this book this coming year. Ambleside Online has all of Charlotte Mason's volumes for free reading on their website, and that's what we'll be using for this.

My Own Additions

I also have the following books that I will be adding to our book basket: The Book of Virtues, by William J. Bennet; and A Child's Book of Character Building, Book 1, by Ron & Rebekah Coriell. Both of these books contain short stories, categorized by character traits. We have been reading The Book of Virtues already, but we still have a lot to read in it.

Math Enrichment

I forgot to put these in my Math post, but since they really are an enrichment and not the main math curriculum, I went ahead and added them here!

Both of my boys were interested in this, so I ordered them each a kit from the Your Business Math Series from Simply Charlotte Mason. One child wanted the Pet Store, the other wanted the Book Store. These books show your kids the basics of starting up and running a business.

The start up for the business includes: creating a logo, ordering and recording inventory, setting prices, and starting and keeping a ledger. Then, the book goes through 12 months of scenarios for that business, and includes "chance cards" to draw that will switch things up. The child then needs to figure out how to keep their business running each month.

Each month, they will learn how to write checks, pay bills, figure sales tax, adjust inventory, pay sales tax, advertise, calculate profit/loss, and more!

My sons already have their own lawn mowing business, so I think these books will help them sharpen up their business and customer service skills!

Picture Study

Picture Study, like Music and Poetry Studies, is an area where I could have saved some money and just gathered the resources myself. But since this coming year is going to be such a big change for us, I wanted to really get a feel for how these are done in the Charlotte Mason method. So for this year, I ordered the materials offered by Simply Charlotte Mason.

We will be studying 3 artists this year: Constable, Velazquez, and Rembrandt. I ordered a Picture Study Portfolio for each, put together by Emily Kiser. Each portfolio contains 8 full-color works of the artist. In addition, there is also a book that explains how to do Picture Study, a brief biography of the artist, and a story/description of each of the works contained in the portfolio.

Music & Hymn Study

This year, we will be studying 3 composers: Bach, Chopin, and Beethoven. These music kits, Music Study with the Masters, were done by Sonya Shafer of Simply Charlotte Mason. Each kit comes with a booklet that tells you how to do music study, as well as a biography of the composer. The kit also contains 2 CD's each full of that composer's music.

We also will be learning some hymns throughout the year, using Then Sings My Soul, by Robert J. Morgan. I love this book, as it gives the story behind each hymn and its writer. We will also be using YouTube to find the tune and sing along.

Poetry

For our Poetry Study, we will be learning about Robert Louis Stevenson and reading his poems throughout the year. We will be using Enjoy the Poems: Robert Louis Stevenson, by Ruth Smith and Sonya Shafer.

Shakespeare

We will be doing a Shakespeare study for one term this year. I chose A Midsummer Night's Dream. We will be using the Shakespeare in Three Steps guide by Sonya Shafer. I also ordered the recommended Ark Angel audio reading of the script. I was able to find this on Thrift Books for a reasonable price, still in the packaging!

Handicrafts

We all discussed what kind of handicrafts should be taught. Handicrafts need to be useful skills. So, after much discussion, we chose CPR/First Aid for one term. Hubby is on our fire department and a certified instructor, so he will be able to both teach and certify each of the boys. For one term, they are to take a firearms and safety class. And for one term, they each chose something different they would like to learn. My 13-year-old wants to learn photography. We have a photographer in the family that we will soon be asking to help us out with that. And my 10-year-old wants to learn woodcarving, especially whittling. We already have the basic tools for this, so this should work out great!

Nature Study

For Nature Study this past year, I purchased each of the boys one of these Nature Journals by The Thinking Tree. We have all kinds of beautiful parks in our area where we can go walking and just observe nature. We have not used these a whole lot, so for this next year, we will continue to use these Nature Journals. When the weather's nice I try to get us out for a nature walk at least once per week.

We also have collected tons of field guides for our state and region to study & reference. Trees, edibles, wildflowers, birds, butterflies, mammals, and also an animal track pocket guide.

Foreign Language & Latin

For Foreign Language, we will continue with Mango Languages. I love this program! I pay $20 monthly, and I can have up to 5 different users on this account, and as many of the languages as they want. We have done some Spanish, and my oldest did German when he was in high school. A couple of months ago, we decided to switch over to French. I took 3 years of it in high school, and we have all been doing it together.

In addition to Mango, my 13-year-old will start a basic Latin study this year. Over the past 2 years, we did a simple vocabulary study of Greek and Latin roots in our English language. This book should take my son a little deeper into Latin, while still being quick and light. I believe learning Latin helps solidify understanding the English language.

Family Read Aloud

And finally, these are the read-alouds from the list I chose this year:
Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan
Bambi, by Felix Salten
The Story of the Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit
The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George
I already had Treasure Island, and I believe it is an abridged version. So before we start that book, I am going to see if I can find a non-abridged version. I like reading the original stories. Other than that, I am so looking forward to reading all of these books with my kids! ❤️

That's It!

Whew! Now that is a long list of enrichment & elective goodies! Keep in mind, these will be spread throughout the year, nothing except read-aloud is done every single day (in fact, many are only once per week), and many of them will be short lessons each time we do them. And except for the few things I noted as separate for my 13-year-old, all of these will be done all together. So, yes, looking at it all in one post seems like a lot! But I'm hoping the schedule I am working out for everything will be well-balanced.

Thank you, if you have read this far with me! I would love to see your comments below, if you have any questions, or if you have used any of these items or will be using them. I hope this post gave you some ideas, and don't forget to check out the playlist and blog list below!

Have a great weekend, everyone! And if you're still celebrating the 4th, be safe!